[Prboom-devel] OT: doom licenses

[Colin P. <cp...@do...>]

On Mon, Dec 18, 2000 at 11:41:41AM -0800, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> On Mon 18 Dec 00,  8:24 PM, Florian 'Proff' Schulze said...
> > Maybe we can see how ZDoom has done it when the source is released and then
> > reimplement it, so we don't have licensing issues. 
>  
> it's not GPL?  considering that the author claims to have used lxdoom and
> MBF code, maybe if you guys asked him, he'd reconsider whatever license he's
> currently using.

Both ZDoom and csdoom come with the GPL license now; it's kind of complex 
though, because they include Hexen code which can't be legally used in a 
GPL program (and Raven have made it clear they aren't changing that).

IANAL, but the legal situation right now looks like:
- it's illegal to take Hexen code via any route into a GPL project
- it's therefore illegal to compile or use (recent versions of) zdoom or csdoom
- it's legal to use code from zdoom or csdoom in a GPL project, 
 provided you know who the author is and it's not from Hexen

And a thousand curses on Raven for their stupid license, and on all those 
foolish enough to have got entangled with it.

-- 
Colin Phipps <cp...@do...>   http://www.cph.demon.co.uk/